Well, it was a little complex. It was a room with a wandering treasure chest. When you entered, it got dark. Along with the treasure chest, there were spaces that made a loud noise, lighting up the room momentarily to let you see where the treasure chest currently was, and (I think, but it's been a while) giving you damage.

Actually, that kind of rings a bell. That makes the original puzzle I designed even more basic and retarded than one from Gobli... and people wonder why I never released it.

Just in case anyone wasn't paying attention to the con this year, here is the presentation for Arc Arath (all 3 parts):



Also, I had some artwork done. I'll be posting that here as soon as I can get to work and get them scanned in.

Lantis,

I had the chance to watch the first video in its entirety yesterday, and I must say that I'm super impressed with the website that you have going for this game. The walkthrough and hand created ASCII dungeons must have taken forever to make. It looks like it is going to be a very cool game!!

Thanks, I hope it's as good as you are expecting. SK and I have put a crap-ton of effort into everything we've done. We want to make sure everything is as good as it can be.

Anyways, I've finally got all the artwork that I had Lamar work on all scanned and edited and whatnot. So I'll throw them in spoilers and comment on each one. Also, they were added to the list in the media thread.

If you watched the Magcon 2010 videos, you kind of know a bit about the characters. But I'll be kind of going over them again here. I'm also stating again (for like... the 4th time) that while these characters are named after IRL people like myself and SK, they are quite different. They are well developed and you should be able to relate with them easily enough.


This is Jay. And while he looks like some kind of elf... he's really not. SK wanted to keep the sprites we used in the original. So that's why he looks the way he does. Just know he's a normal human just like the rest of the party. I really liked this one as it shows a certain part in the game where the characters will eventually face themselves. Also the range of emotions from all the portraits document well the kind of hardships the party will be going through.


Brad's character is rather intersting. While his sprite in-game looks like a normal RM1 sprite. It's actually a custom. There's a feather in the characters hair. Originally that was going to have some kind of tie-in to the plot... but eventually just kind of fell out (yay using up a full block of sprite data for nothing). Though I like how the art put imphasis on it anyways. Also, Brad's character is one of the only party memebers who's going to be using healing magic... and he comes off as a pretty heavy bookworm.


I think what I liked most about Adam's portraits is how it shows how carefree the characters are at the start of the game (top left most portrait) and how they change over the course of it all (bottom most portrait). Adam is the third character in which you'll start off with. You'll be sticking with these three for a good part of the game. A temp character will step in from time to until the final (and real) fourth character joins in.


The fourth character's name I'm going to hide as I want to keep who the fourth main character a secret. The story leaves it kind of open for the players to kind of guess. And hopefully players will kind of change their guess of who they think it is until he's locked into the party. So I'm just going to let the image speak for its self for the time being.


And here's the poster. Remember how I said that Adam's portraits kind of show how the characters in the game change physically and mentally? Well, that's kind of the entire theme in the full color poster. It shows all four characters as normal college studends in the left pannel. And then is shows them while in the midst of their journey through Elvenia in the right. The center is littered with a few minor and major antagonists.

I really liked how these turned out. I think when I put them in the offline website, I may take out the caption text in the portraits, but I'll leave them normally here. And know we have Lamar working on other portraits as well. So there will be more to show off later. So look forward to that.

Also, SK and I have been making some good progress in the game. We've got pretty much everything lined up till the last stretch of the game. There's still no release date, but know that we are getting close to being able to fully concentrate on battle. If you saw the Magcon footage this year, you know that it'll need some work anyways. But yeah, things are actually moving a long pretty nice for the moment.

Wow. Impressive art; I really like the poster!

I'd like to say once again how excited I am for this game. Can't wait to LP it and break it.

.... My feather is not to be used as a weapon.


And what glitches do you think you'll find, Dray? Don't you know that Jay's stunning victory over Reith during the con demo was all planned? ^_^

You mean Brad's feather. Different person, yo.

Anyways, I don't think Dray will be looking for anything specifically... just anything he can. Which is why we're going to have to be extra careful.

>___>

Indeed, and I know all the ins and outs of RPGM1's workings, so that's gonna make it all the easier for me to find the little fractures in your game.

i think even if the game it self turns into the biggest fail in the history of man kind (which it wont), it will still win major props for all the extra stuff. part of the excitement of this game for me is from all the little extras that give it depth and character. this transcends a game from a project to a professional level.

im very interested in how this game will preform, though id of liked to of seen a longer playable demo just to get a feel for the story.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge fan of demos. I can never seem to pick a good point in the game that is long enough for a demo without being TOO long or without giving TOO much away. So for that, I apologize. And thanks for keeping interest in it even without a propper demo.

I think what you did at MagCon '09 was good. Showing off various features of the game. Actually, that's what I did, too last year.

I'm glad you liked it. I can't say I've ever come from releasing a demo without feeling like it was a poor/cheap example of what the final product is going to be like. And it's probably because of that, that there will probably be no more demos before the game is released.

And I say that more because of the bigest news to hit the RM community than anything else. With Thutmose actually releasing his RM1 keyboard, SK and I should (read: possibly, not definately) be able to pick up production MUCH faster and be able to slate a release date sooner than we'd make a demo.

::edit::

Btw, I have been neglecting the first post which I was going to keep updated. So I got around to putting some worthwhile stuff up there.

Well, I figured Lantis might do it himself, but, in case he wasn't thinking of it, let us look at a quick update.

The storyboard (because I like to make it sound more official than it really is) for the 14th scenario is done. When I return to Lantis's crib in a week or two, I will give him a briefing of how the various scenes should be ordered, we'll probably try to set up the motions and animations for one scene just to see if it will work out the way we want, and then he'll do the rest, I think.

From here it may only take two more scenario cards to finish the rest of the game, hopefully not three, because even I am starting to get tired of seeing me write too much, regardless of whether I am so fortunate as to have a working Kupid 2.0 in my hands here in just a little while or not.



.... Oh, and, since Lantis revealed the drawings of all four protagonists, then I too would like to present one of my own favorite characters that I personally went to Ix's cousin (that was your cousin, right?) myself to have immortalized on paper ->


He's pretty good at this, huh?

Yeah, I really would like to know where Thutmose has ran off to. Just watch, we'll get a hold of KµPid the second we have all the dialog for the game all typed out. It'll be just our luck.

Anyways, I really have to give it up to Lamar. He's been doing an excellent job with the concept art.

And finally, we have made it to the final continent of the game. This map only has the final dungeon of the game, four dungeons before that, and a town. So this truly is the end of the game. Each of the four dungeons belong to one of the four main antagonists and can be gotten in any order you wish. But it is required to open up the way to the final dungeon. And that's just about it. Then we can start working on battle.

I'm thinking about making another video update covering pretty much all we've done since the last one... and kind of demo the most recent dungeon we made (which I think is pretty awesome).

that would rock. id like to see what youve been doing, gives me motivation to work on my own game.

Alrighty, I've got a question for you Lanti. How much system data are you guys using up?

With Usuru the data was filled at a pretty even rate, but with Josh's Adventure the scenario takes up way more memory than the system. Are you guys planning on doing a system swap any time during the game?

I must admit too...I like the video update idea. Might have to try that out myself.

Actually, system data is looking fairly good right now. We're only at 10 block (I'm not sure exactly how much data we have left, but we have at least 5 blocks worth left) and have just about everything accounted for. There are only a few dungeons left. I was being very careful to save on system data at any point I possibly could. Any area that the player can't see, there isn't anything. I made sure there wasn't a single tile taking up system data that couldn't be seen... there's just no point. I've also used a lot of pre-set maps when I could.... or decorated with scenario data instead of system. Because of this, I think we'll be able to fit the entire game on one system card. Actually, really early on in the game's creation, it was our goal to manage system data as best as we possibly could.

So, I'd better start getting some things together for a new video. We got some more images in from Lamar that I need to show off anyhow.

wow that is some good conservation. im getting close to burning out my sys card and ive done like you. anything that could be dumped into an event i did, everything that you couldnt see i axed, i eliminated needlessly large hall ways for space and nitpicked my largest dungeons to see if i could make them a bit smaller. hell, i used lots of presets but spruced them up so they wouldnt look like generic sh*t. even after all of this im still only getting 3 scen cards per sys and ive maxed the hell out of every scen card so far. im down to 10k system left.

as an interesting aside, you most likely wont use all 15 blocks. i predict you will hit a sys data of zero before getting that last block of memory space.